6. Lyndon B. Johnson

Wikimedia Commons

LBJ was both an agent of significant reform and one of the most colorful men to sit in the Oval Office (he once promised a photo op to reporters on his ranch if they chased around a bunch of piglets, which they did, and were promptly assaulted by the nearby sow while Johnson sat laughing in the car). The Civil Rights Act of 1964, the War on Poverty and the Great Society ultimately weren't enough to overcome the war's unpopularity. He'd later lament: "I left the woman I really loved — the Great Society — in order to fight that bitch of a war."